From way back in 1985 comes the original commercial for Super Mario Bros., which self describes the game as a “Super Dream Adventure Game”.
For Malala Day, Malala’s 18th birthday on July 12th, Malala is done with wishes. She wants action. #BooksNotBullets
For Malala Day, Malala’s 18th birthday on July 12th, Malala is done with wishes. She wants action.
Post a photo of yourself holding up your favorite book and share why YOU choose #BooksNotBullets – and tell world leaders to fund the real weapon for change, education. The Malala Fund will use them on Malala Day to show world leaders that the public wants global education to be a top priority.
The shocking truth is that world leaders have the money to fully fund primary AND secondary education around the world – but they are choosing to spend it on other things, like their military budgets.
In fact, if the whole world stopped spending money on the military for just 8 days, we could have the $39 billion still needed to provide 12 years of free, quality education to every child on the planet.
Malala shares why she choose The Diary of Anne Frank for her #booksnotbullets campaign.
“I chose ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ because the book reveals the courage and strength of a young girl living under war and conflict. It inspires me to believe that every child deserves the right to dream, the right to learn and the right to live in peace. I urge world leaders to prioritize education because education is the only way through which we can defeat terrorism, fight against poverty and bring peace and prosperity. The money that is spent on just a few guns, if given to a child’s education, can change that child’s life. We cannot stop terrorism just by killing the terrorists and people. We need to fight against the ideology of terrorism and extremism, and that can be done successfully only through education. If a child, suffering from poverty and difficulties, is not given a book, he will pick up a gun. I call on my sisters and brothers all around the world to join me in this mission – #booksnotbullets.” -Malala
Join the world this Malala Day and share why you choose #BooksNotBullets
Courteney Cox and OmniPeace Team Up To Create Music School In Rwanda
Courteney Cox is helping to bring music education to Rwandan children with her involvement in the OmniPeace Rwanda Rocks! campaign, which was unveiled Thursday at the W Los Angeles-West Beverly Hills.
OmniPeace founder Mary Fanaro, along with Cox, an ambassador of the charity, launched the campaign in order to build a school with a focus on music education. The school would be the eighth OmniPeace has built, and the first in Rwanda.
“I’m such a supporter of Mary and everything she does,” Cox said about her support for OmniPeace.com. “She has built these schools and now she wants to do this music school and of course I’m here to support her, to bring awareness. I think music heals people.”
On her most recent visit, Fanaro said her guide and driver was a music teacher and asked if she had ever considered a music school. The idea struck a chord.
OmniPeace is a humanitarian fashion company that builds schools to empower youth living in extreme poverty in Africa, Fanaro explained. OmniPeace made its mark by creating a logo designed to inspire and share its powerful message. The logo became iconic in fashion and gained supporters ranging from Hollywood celebrities to leaders in the global movement to bring change to Africa.
OmniPeace 061815 from Mottern Art Productions on Vimeo.
Via Variety
That Time Debbie Harry Hosted SNL in 1981
Blonde’s Debbie Harry turned 70 (!!!) this week. She recorded several number one singles with Blondie and is sometimes considered the first rapper to chart at number one in the United States as well, due to her work on “Rapture”. She has also had success as a solo artist, and in the mid-1990s she recorded and performed with The Jazz Passengers. Her acting career spans over thirty film roles and numerous television appearances.
Let’s take a look back at the time she hosted Saturday Night Live for Valentine’s Day in 1981. Her debut solo album, KooKoo would be released 5 months later.
DEBORAH HARRY Hosts SNL (Valentine's Day 1981) (Full Show) from VD Party Films on Vimeo.
What’s It Like Auditioning For The Blue Man Group
It’s evolved slightly throughout the years because it’s tough to find Blue Men. About half of us are professional musicians who learn the character, and the other half are professional actors who learn the music. The thing that’s hard is that the character is not the kind of character that a trained actor can immediately understand, and that’s why half of the Blue Men we have aren’t even trained actors. It’s a ‘clown’ character for all intents and purposes, which is a term that’s kind of misused now. For the character to be believable it has to tap into an honesty and a sense of self that a lot of times, actors are trained to get rid of. There are some people who can access that honesty in the character, and there are other people who are basically trained in all sorts of acting styles that can’t really access it.
The audition process is set up to see who can access that and who can’t. [It is also set-up to see] who can tell a story without using any words, but also without being melodramatic, and without over-acting. Just this kind of pared down simplicity, with not much physical movement, just able to express these simple, base emotions, just with your eyes basically.
The audition is half-character-work and half-music. You have to be able to get at least a decent part of the music. A lot of the training process is learning drumming, or learning the Blue Man style of drumming. If you don’t have that elemental understanding of drumming you can’t really get the gig. In the [acting portion of the] audition process there are these different techniques that have been taken from Meisner, and Grotowski, and from simple acting, and been tooled to specific Blue Man purposes. [In my audition] I was given this simple task, which is just, entering the room. It is an old, old clown exercise. You enter the room as a neutral character, just trying to be as pared down, and as honest as possible, just taking in the people in the room. Then you leave the room once you feel something has been exchanged between the two of you. This exchange can be something monumental like we discovered the meaning of life, or we cured some huge disease, or it can be very, very tiny, just a simple hello. Just an exchange of a greeting or something. Simply by doing a very pared down audition like that you can tell who is game for the complexity of the character and who isn’t really willing to go there.
Via Atlas Obscura
10 Of The Best Clothing Tags You’ll Ever Read
Instructive AND funny…I like that in my clothes.
The Indigo Girls set list from June 26. Look what they wrote on the bottom.
On June 26, The Indigo Girls had a scheduled date at The Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Atlanta, their hometown. That morning, gay marriage was declared legal across the US in historic supreme court ruling. Look what the dynamic duo wrote on the bottom of their set list. Love them.
Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard: “I don’t feel that all the great songs have been written”
Do you ever worry that all the good songs have been written? Or do you feel like there’s an infinite source out there?
I don’t feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it’s one’s particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.
I think there’s something that feels so good about a 1–4–5 chord progression. It’s a very standard chord progression and it just feels good to the ears. When a song goes from a 4-chord down to a 1-chord, the resolution that our brains recognize and that feel and sound good to us are not going to cease to sound good to us if we start creating new whacky chord structures that don’t appeal to us. I don’t know what it is in our lizard brains that — certainly in Western music — make these progressions and melodies sound good to us, but they do. I would much rather hear a song that’s written from a fresh perspective, using ideas that have existed in rock & roll for 50 years, than something that is incredibly abrasive to my ears but is new. I could write you something that you’ve never heard right now. But it’s not going to sound good. You’re not going to want to listen to it. The thing that makes us want to listen to things, and the thing that makes music really embedded in our lives, is that there’s something new-yet-familiar sounding about it.
Via Medium
This Rule Of Life from the book Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings
How Edward Estlin became E. E. Cummings, thanks to a great teacher.
